The only way it is feasible to do so is to drop all of the Debian
patches. Without this, upstream is not cooperative with us.

Why is this?

I think because of William Pitcock with:
- his very strong words,
- his attitude: perfect or nothing (in design, in management, ...),
- his lack to listen upstreams and their needs: needs of other
distributions, old compatibility needs, or simply time
constrain and limited interest of upstream.
ciao nenolod ;-)
ciao
cate